REFUGEES BRING ANTI-SEMITISM TO EUROPE, WARNS SENIOR HUNGARIAN MINISTER:

A senior Hungarian cabinet minister warned that refugees entering Europe are anti-Semitic. Janos Lazar, PM Viktor Orban’s cabinet chief, delivered the warning on 14 April 2016 during a press conference in Budapest. "Refugees entering Europe now are strongly anti-Semitic,” he said in explaining why his government was blocking the vast majority of people from Syria and Iraq from entering the country. "Where there are large numbers of immigrants, there is greater anti-Semitism - France and Germany, for example,” Lazar said. He also claimed Hungary has low levels of anti-Semitism. While anti-Semitic violence is rare in Hungary, intolerant rhetoric against Jews in government and mainstream media is widely seen as a problem. Mazsihisz, the umbrella group of Hungarian Jewish communities, recently said the Hungarian government pledged at least $2 million dollars in funding this year for maintenance and renovations of abandoned Jewish cemeteries. Meanwhile, the remains of Jews murdered during World War II and found in the Danube river in 2011 were buried in Budapest on Friday, 16 April 2016. The bones, some pockmarked with bullet holes, are now thought to have belonged to Jews shot on the banks of the Danube by members of the Hungarian Nazi-allied Arrow Cross party in late 1944 or early 1945. (JTA)